The university won't do anything. CECA doesn't exist to help students find jobs, it exists to help employers find students.

More importantly, the vast majority of students have no (e: major) issues with CECA during their time at Waterloo. You hear a lot of bad stories spread around, and the people who get screwed over get really screwed over, but it's uncommon. If you consider how many thousands of students go through CECA every year, the fact that there are only a couple of horror stories is not that bad.

That's not to say you shouldn't, it's good to let university administration know there is a problem, but you might not get very much student support, and they won't actually change anything anyways.

What has a better chance of working is going through FEDS or one of the faculty societies, who have a working relationship with university administration.

my company laid off all the interns and now CECA wants to fail my work term

Company said they pay average but it turns out they pay the science average not the engineering average, can you help (they can't)

My company isn't sending me an offer letter and I asked CECA to help multiple times, they said they contacted the employer, but when I eventually called them they said they never received any communication about it

CECA rescheduled my interview slot a week early without telling me and now I have to write an apology letter for missing an interview at a time that wasn't communicated to me

Not having a bad story and having no issues are not equivalent. "I had two rankings and had to decide how to rank to get my second choice only if my first choice was already filled" doesn't make a great story, but many people face that problem.

It's also optimistic to say there wouldn't be much student support - the student body has a history of not putting effort into showing their support or opposition to something. For example, there was very little to no complaints about the WPRIG fee a few years ago, and the vote to hold a referendum failed at the FEDS general meeting. However, it was removed by students voting online - first students voting people to the students' counsel who supported the referendum, then in the actual referendum - and from that referendum, we found it was strongly opposed. In a similar spirit, doing a poll would be the only way to accurately determine if there is support for a CECA reform.

Not having a bad story and having no issues are not equivalent. "I had two rankings and had to decide how to rank to get my second choice only if my first choice was already filled" doesn't make a great story, but many people face that problem.

Nobody is forcing you to use jobmine. CECA uses that system because it benefits employers.

For the record, I was in that situation. What I did was email the interviewer and asked what they ranked me, then when I found out I was ranked 2nd, I emailed every single person who interviewed for the job to see who got the offer and if they would take it.

That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Despite its shortcomings, Jobmine provides you a relatively easy process to apply to a large number of jobs. However, this doesn't mean it (and CECA) can be improved.

I'm glad that situation worked out for you. However, it might be worth mentioning that your solution involved going against CECA's policy:

Don’t call an employer directly to discuss the interview process or to discuss rankings

I think you're missing my point, I'll repost part of another comment I left here.

There's a huge misconception in the way CECA is designed.

CECA is designed to protect employers. That's it.

Students being a pain to employers doesn't help them attract new jobs to put on jobmine.

If you want to keep getting the world's easiest application/interview process for awesome jobs, you have to play the jobmine game. If you don't like the game, don't play it, it's that simple. CECA can afford to not give a shit about students in order to give employers stability, because the co-op program has enormous demand.

These aren't shortcomings from the employer's perspective. It gives them incredible stability and freedom that they wouldn't normally have if they posted on real job boards.

And yes, it does go against CECAs policy, I knew that but it was worth it to me to potentially get the job.

Sometimes employers end up with a grumpy student that doesn't really want to be there & nobody's happy

Sometimes students are forced to take 2nd-best options when they could have taken the optimal option (ex. what if rank1 doesn't really want the job? rank2 would have gotten it and now rank2 might be scared to end up with no jobs & took a sub-optimal job offer)

Why can't we just say "If you don't like our students to have the upper hand in decisions, feel free to go away" to employers when there's a bizillion job postings? This would certainly weed out the "bad" companies, wouldn't it? We're UW students, play our game if you want to hire us